


would you hold my hand (while i'm dying?)

by alamorn



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dream Sex, F/M, Ghost Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:53:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23659426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/pseuds/alamorn
Summary: One of the names Geralt calls is hers.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Renfri | Shrike
Comments: 11
Kudos: 41
Collections: Smut 4 Smut 2020





	would you hold my hand (while i'm dying?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [infernal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infernal/gifts).



> I don't really do purple prose, but hopefully this is dreamy enough for you!
> 
> Title from "Train" by Brick + Mortar
> 
> Available in Russian [here!](https://ficbook.net/readfic/9725792)

Geralt ached. He couldn't tell where. He reached out, not sure who he was reaching for, and his hand landed on Renfri.

That was right -- they were in bed. It was fine. Everything was fine. It had all been a bad dream; she wasn't dead. He hadn't killed her. There was no destiny coming to meet him, vicious and implacable.

"There you are," she whispered, running her finger from his brow to his lips, pulling his bottom lip down just a little. "I knew you'd come back to me eventually."

He rolled over her, gathering her in his arms. They were naked -- had they been naked before? They must have been, he didn't remember taking his clothes off. He kissed her hard. He didn't want to talk. He didn't want her to ask him any questions. He didn't want to admit his dreams.

She braced her feet on the bed, caught his hips between her knees, twisted them so she was on top. When she broke the kiss, she held his hands down beside his head. He could break her grip if he wanted. He didn't.

"You keep leaving me," she said. Ground her cunt against his hardness. She was wet and slippery, the hottest thing he'd ever touched. He bucked, trying to get her to focus on their bodies, forget talking. She held him down more firmly. "You'll never stop."

"I always come back," he said. It was almost a question. He couldn't _remember_. When had they last been together? How had he gotten here? _Would_ he come back?

"You can't stop that, either," she said, traced her nose down the line of his throat, sucked a kiss onto his collarbone, hard enough that it hurt.

He tried to break her grip, roll them over once more so they could stop talking, start doing something less unsettling, but he couldn't. He frowned, tried again. Renfri was strong, it was true, but she wasn't stronger than him. He should be able to do this. 

"It'll just hurt more," she told him. She sounded sad, and when he looked down, her cheek was on his chest. She undulated gently, still rubbing against him.

"Why?" he asked.

"It always hurts, to fight fate. It hurts to accept it, too. It just... hurts, and there's nothing you can do to stop it."

"Not even revenge?" he asked, not sure whether he meant _that_ to hurt or not.

She smiled at him. She released his hands. She sat back, rose off his hips and fitted him against her entrance, sank down, slowly, so slowly, agonizingly slowly, until she sat flush against him. "We are within each other," she told him. "No one can take that from us."

Renfri, within him?

He woke abruptly, lunging across the bumping cart, and the farmer reached back and shoved him gently down. "Enough of that, witcher," he said. "Settle now, settle."

"Renfri," Geralt said. "Where is she?"

"I don't know any Renfri, witcher. The only ones here are us. Settle now."

Geralt sank back under. Renfri sat astride him, her muscled thighs working as she rode him, slow and even and endless. A wound gaped in her throat, and she wore her blood like the finest gown. When he tried to throw her away from him, she clung all the harder.

"You made your choice," she whispered in his ear. "You will never know if it was the correct one."

"There was no good choice," Geralt growled. "There never is."

"You're right," she said. Her hair hung down around their faces. Her breath puffed against his lips. Her blood dripped onto his clavicle. "The question isn't the lesser evil. The question is _what consequences can you live with_?"

Geralt couldn't answer that. Living had never been a choice; it was habit. He would live until he was killed. That was how it went for witchers. There were no happy endings here.

"Oh, Geralt," Renfri sighed, and they were in the forest. She was in her armor and he was in his clothes. Both of them held naked blades. "You always have a choice."

When she attacked, Geralt blocked only slowly. She swung again and again, pressing his defense as he backed up until his foot sank in the mud of the stream bank. 

"I don't want to fight you," he said. "I never did."

"What you want doesn't matter," she said. "Only what you _do_."

He dropped his guard. Her blade stopped a bare breath from his throat and he closed his eyes, waited for it all to be over. 

When she kissed him, it hurt.

"It will never get easier," she told him. She was flat on her back in the dirt and he was thrusting into her, hard, sharp snaps of his hips. This time, the blood dripped from his neck. This time, she was the victor. The loss was a relief. No more decisions waited to be made. There were only the consequences now.

He sank into her, rested his forehead against hers. "I'm ready," he told her.

"Open your eyes," she told him, and he frowned. His eyes _were_ open. "Open your _eyes_ ," she insisted, and her knife found his thigh, drove in.

He bit back a scream, flailing away, and the farmer reached back, pressed him back into the hard wood of the cart. " _Easy_ , witcher," he said, "we're almost there."

Geralt looked around wildly, searching for her. She wouldn't leave him like that; she'd never left him, not really. His leg was an agony, the ghoul bite necrotizing quickly. He reached for his bag, searched for another potion. White Honey would be best, but he would take anything that might slow the poison.

Renfri pushed a bottle into his hand. He stared at her and she winked at him. He dumped the potion over the wound, snarled at the pain, and sank back into her bed.

She was propped up on her elbow, chin in hand, staring at him. "Your destiny is coming." The bed was soft and piled with pillows, the blankets soft and warm. The headboard was elaborately carved cherrywood, and a woman who became a wolf wended her way across it, through a forest, facing enemies with her teeth bared. He ran a hand over the carvings, and looked at Renfri and she bared her teeth obligingly. It was a princess' bed, or a queen's. And the room, when he glanced around, was a queen's as well. Palatial wall hangings, rich carpets, and a sword in a place of honor over the fireplace. The details fuzzed whenever he looked too closely, so he looked back at Renfri, whose features never wavered. 

"I never wanted a destiny," he told her.

"And I never wanted to be cursed," she said. "Some people are just born unlucky. Do you think you're one of them?" Her hand dropped to his dick, found him hard and willing beneath her fine sheets. "Would you give all this up to be just another farmer?"

Geralt said nothing and her hand stopped. She shoved him back, but they weren't in bed anymore. They were standing in the forest once more, and his back was to a tree, the deep furrows of the bark digging in to his naked skin. "You can lie to me, and you can lie to yourself, but you can't lie to fate."

He growled, turned them and hiked her up, fucked into her. She gasped, threw her head back so he could see the untouched expanse of her neck, her heels digging into his lower back. "You think you know me," he said. "Everyone always does."

"Geralt," she said, voice pitying, eyes kind, hands fisted in his hair as she clenched around his cock. "You're not that hard to read."

He tried to drop her, tried to step away, and found himself falling through darkness, Renfri exploding out of his arms as a flock of shrike, wings battering his face and arms. He dropped into the ruins of a castle, the place he'd fought the striga, but this time Renfri was behind him, shining in the dark. "We monsters must stick together," she told him. "You'll learn that soon."

"I'm not a monster," he said, though the defense wasn't heated. "Neither are you."

"Oh, but I am," she said. "Don't try to make yourself feel better by using me; that's not what I'm here for."

"What _are_ you here for?" he asked, and heard the striga scream. 

"I'm here for you, of course," she said, cupped his jaw, rose onto her toes and kissed him. Gently this time, gentle and tentative, and her lips were soft, and her hand was soft, and this time, when she reached for his belt, he grabbed her wrist.

"Don't," he said. His eyes burned; he couldn't remember the last time he'd cried. He thought it might have been during the Trial of the Grasses, when he'd hurt so badly he'd hoped to die. But maybe it had been when he'd woken and found Renfri gone and known his choice. "I'll do it. You don't need to convince me anymore."

She tilted her head. "Can I comfort you?"

"This is not a comfort," he said, meaning the striga's castle, meaning the pain in his leg and his heart, meaning the way she always forced him to look clear-eyed into the future. Meaning all of it.

"No," she said. "It wasn't meant to be." They were in the woods once more, his camp outside Blavikin, Roach chewing contentedly from her feedbag, the stream trickling quietly past. There was the log they'd sat on, his fire, and Renfri spread out on the ground, naked atop her cloak. She spread her legs, showed him her curls and the flushed pink of her cunt, glistening with wet. 

He went slowly, mistrustfully, to his knees before her, but she didn't shift or grab him, didn't start bleeding and go rigid and cold. She just watched patiently as he slid his hands up the soft skin of her inner thighs, parted the lips of her cunt with his thumbs, and bent to drink his fill.

She was hot and slick under his tongue, tart. When he licked her clit, her thighs tightened convulsively against his shoulders. Geralt drank deeply of her, taking whatever she gave, until she jerked and shuddered and pulled him up to kiss the taste of herself off his lips.

Renfri looked at him, foreheads tight together, her breath washing over his lips, but he couldn't _feel_ anything; it was like watching it happen to another, when she said, "It's too late to run. It was meant to be. There's not much you can do about that."

"Show me the way," he said, the greatest surrender he could give her as she grew faint and ephemeral in his hands, like the moment a wraith popped out of existence. But a wraith always came back. When Renfri was gone, she was gone, and he was in the back of the farmer's cart, leg pounding with pain, toxins so thick in his blood that his head was light and uncertain on his shoulders.

"No," he begged, but she didn't come back.

And Geralt knew what he must do.


End file.
